University of Virginia Library

105. LETTER CV.

I have spent the last day or two in farewell visits to
my favorite haunts in Constantinople. I galloped up
the Bosphorus, almost envying les ames damnées that
skim so swiftly and perpetually from the Symplegades
to Marmora, and from Marmora back to the Symple
gades. I took a caique to the Valley of Sweet Waters,
and rambled away an hour on its silken sward.
I lounged a morning in the bazars, smoked a parting-pipe
with my old Turk in the Bezestein, and exchanged
a last salaam with the venerable Armenian bookseller,
still poring over his illuminated Hafiz. And
last night, with the sundown boat waiting at the pier,
I loitered till twilight in the small and elevated cemetery
between Galata and Pera, and, with feelings of
even painful regret, gazed my last upon the matchless
scene around me. In the words of the eloquent
author of Anastasius, when taking the same farewell,
“For the last time, my eye wandered over the dimpled
hills, glided along the winding waters, and dived
into the deep and delicious dells, in which branch out
its jagged shores. Reverting from these smiling outlets
of its sea-beat suburbs to its busy centre, I surveyed,
in slow succession, every chaplet of swelling
cupolas, every grove of slender minarets, and every
avenue of glittering porticoes, whose pinnacles dart
their golden shafts from between the dark cypress-trees
into the azure sky. I dwelt on them as on things
I never was to behold more; and not until the evening
had deepened the veil it cast over the varied scene
from orange to purple, and from purple to the sable
hue of night, did I tear myself away from the impressive
spot. I then bade the city of Constantine farewell
for ever, descended the high-crested hill, stepped
into the heaving boat, turned my back upon the
shore, and sank my regrets in the sparkling wave,
across which the moon had already flung a trembling
bar of silvery light, pointing my way, as it were, to
other unknown regions.”

There are few intellectual pleasures like that of
finding our own thoughts and feelings well described
by another!

I certainly would not live in the east; and when I
sum up its inconveniences and the deprivations to
which the traveller from Europe, with his refined
wants, is subjected, I marvel at the heart-ache with
which I turn my back upon it, and the deep die it has
infused into my imagination. Its few peculiar luxuries
do not compensate for the total absence of comfort;
its lovely scenery can not reconcile you to
wretched lodgings; its picturesque costumes and poetical
people, and golden sky, fine food for a summer's
fancy as they are, can not make you forget the civilized
pleasures you abandon for them—the fresh literature,
the arts and music, the refined society, the elegant
pursuits, and the stirring intellectual collision of
the cities of Europe.

Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople!
If we could compel all our senses into one, and live
by the pleasures of the eye, it were a paradise untranscended.
The Bosphorus—the superb, peculiar, incomparable
Bosphorus! the dream-like, fairy-built seraglio!
the sights within the city so richly strange,
and the valleys and streams around it so exquisitely
fair! the voluptuous softness of the dark eyes haunting
your every step on shore, and the spirit-like swiftness
and elegance of your darting caique upon the
waters! In what land is the priceless sight such a
treasure? Where is the fancy so delicately and divinely
pampered?

Every heave at the capstan-bars drew upon my
heart; and when the unwilling anchor at last let go its
hold, and the frigate swung free with the outward current,
I felt as if, in that moment, I had parted my
hold upon a land of faëry. The dark cypresses and
golden pinnacles of Seraglio Point and the higher
shafts of Sophia's sky-touching minarets were the last
objects in my swiftly receding eye, and, in a short
hour or two, the whole bright vision had sunk below
the horizon.

We crossed Marmora, and shot down the rapid
Dardanelles in as many hours as a passage up had oc

cupied days, and, rounding the coast of Anatolia, entered
between Mitylene and the Asian shore, and, on
the third day, anchored in the bay of Smyrna.

“Everybody knows Smyrna,” says Mac Farlane,
“it is such a place for figs!” It is a low-built town,
at the head of the long gulf, which bears its name,
and, with the exception of the high rock immediately
over it, topped by the ruins of an old castle, said to
imbody in its walls the ancient Christian church, it has
no very striking features. Extensive gardens spread
away on every side, and, without exciting much of
your admiration for its beauty, there is a look of peace
and rural comfort about the neighborhood that affects
the mind pleasantly.

Almost immediately on my arrival, I joined a party
for a few days' tour in Asia Minor. We were five,
and, with a baggage-horse, and a mounted suridjee,
our caravan was rather respectable. Our appointments
were orientally simple. We had each a Turkish
bed (alias, a small carpet), a nightcap, and a
“copyhold” upon a pair of saddlebags, containing
certain things forbidden by the Koran, and therefore
not likely to be found by the way. Our attendant was
a most ill-favored Turk, whose pilgrimage to Mecca
(he was a hajji, and wore a green turban) had, at least,
imparted no sanctity to his visage. If he was not a
rogue, nature had mis-labelled him, and I shelter my
want of charity under the Arabic proverb: “Distrust
thy neighbor if he has made a hajji; if he has made
two, make haste to leave thy house.”

We wound our way slowly out of the narrow and
ill-paved streets of Smyrna, and passing through the
suburban gardens, yellow with lemons and oranges,
crossed a small bridge over the Hermus. This is the
favorite walk of the Smyrniotes, and if its classic river,
whose “golden sands” (here, at least), are not golden,
and its “Bath of Diana” near by, whose waters would
scarce purify her “silver bow,” are something less
than their sounding names; there is a cool, dark cemetery
beyond, less famous, but more practicable for sentiment,
and many a shadowy vine and drooping tree in
the gardens around, that might recompense lovers,
perhaps, for the dirty labyrinth of the intervening
suburb.

We spurred away over the long plain of Hadjilar,
leaving to the right and left the pretty villages, ornamented
by the summer residences of the wealthy merchants
of Smyrna, and in two or three hours reached
a small lone café, at the foot of its bounding range of
mountains. We dismounted here to breathe our
horses, and while coffee was preparing, I discovered,
in a green hollow hard by, a small encampment of
gipsies. With stones in our hands, as the caféjee told
us the dogs were troublesome, we walked down into
the little round-bottomed dell, a spot selected with “a
lover's eye for nature,” and were brought to bay by a
dozen noble shepherd-dogs, within a few yards of their
outer tent.

The noise brought out an old sunburnt woman, and
two or three younger ones, with a troop of boys, who
called in the dogs, and invited us kindly within their
limits. The tents were placed in a half circle, with
their doors inward, and were made with extreme neatness.
There were eight or nine of them, very small
and low, with round tops, the cloth stretched tightly
over an inner frame, and bound curiously down on
the outside with beautiful wicker-work. The curtains
at the entrance were looped up to admit the grateful
sun, and the compactly arranged interiors lay open to
our prying curiosity. In the rounded corner farthest
from the door, lay uniformly the same goat-skin beds,
flat on the ground, and in the centre of most of them,
stood a small loom, at which the occupant plied her
task like an automaton, not betraying by any sign a
consciousness of our presence. They sat cross-leg
ged like the Turks, and had all a look of habitua
sternness, which, with their thin, strongly-marked
gipsy features, and wild eyes, gave them more the appearance
of men. It was the first time I had ever remarked
such a character upon a class of female faces,
and I should have thought I had mistaken their sex,
if their half-naked figures had not put it beyond a
doubt. The men were probably gone to Smyrna, as
none were visible in the encampment, As we were
about returning, the curtain of the largest tent,
which had been dropped on our entrance, was lifted
cautiously, by a beautiful girl, of perhaps thirteen,
who, not remarking that I was somewhat in the rear
of my companions, looked after them a moment, and
then fastening back the dingy folds by a string, returned
to her employment of swinging an infant in a small
wicker hammock, suspended in the centre of the tent.
Her dark, but prettily-rounded arm, was decked with
a bracelet of silver pieces, and just between two of the
finest eyes I ever saw, was suspended by a yellow
thread, one of the small gold coins of Constantinople.
Her softly-moulded bust was entirely bare, and might
have served for the model of a youthful Hebe. A
girdle around her waist sustained loosely a long pair
of full Turkish trousers, of the color and fashion usually
worn by women in the east, and, caught over her
hip, hung suspended by its fringe the truant shawl
that had been suffered to fall from her shoulders and
expose her guarded beauty. I stood admiring her a
full minute, before I observed a middle-aged woman in
the opposite corner, who, bending over her work, was
fortunately as late in observing my intrusive presence.
As I advanced half a step, however, my shadow fell
into the tent, and starting with surprise, she rose and
dropped the curtain.

We remounted, and I rode on, thinking of the
vision of loveliness I was leaving in that wild dell.
We travel a great way to see hills and rivers, thought
I, but, after all, a human being is a more interesting
object than a mountain. I shall remember the little
gipsy of Hadjilar, long after I have forgotten Hermus
and Sypilus.

Our road dwindled to a mere bridle-path, as we advanced,
and the scenery grew wild and barren. The
horses were all sad stumblers, and the uneven rocks
gave them every apology for coming down whenever
they could forget the spur, and so we entered the
broad and green valley of Yackerhem (I write it as I
heard it pronounced), and drew up at the door of a
small hovel, serving the double purpose of a café and
a guard-house.

A Turkish officer of the old regime, turbanned and
cross-legged, and armed with pistols and ataghan, sat
smoking on one side the brazier of coals, and the
caféjee exercised his small vocation on the other. Before
the door, a raised platform of greensward, and a
marble slab, facing toward Mecca, indicated the place
for prayer; and a dashing rider of a Turk, who had
kept us company from Smyrna, flying past us and
dropping to the rear alternately, had taken off his slippers
at the moment we arrived, and was commencing
his noon devotions.

We gathered round our commissary's saddle-bags,
and shocked our mussulman friends, by producing the
unclean beast[28] and the forbidden liquor, which, with
the delicious Turkish coffee, never better than in these
wayside hovels, furnished forth a traveller's meal.